The present invention relates to fingernail coatings or press-on nails which are intended to provide an attractive, finished-looking, fingernail polished-looking coating. It is quite common today for women's fingernails to be coated with liquid enamel, which is dried by exposure to the air. The drying time requires, of course, that the nails not come into contact with any object, lest the nail coating become smudged or smeared. In addition, it is currently quite fashionable for French manicuring or polishing, i.e., applying a first coat of liquid nail polish to the nails, allowng them to dry and then superimposing thereon a partial second coat of liquid enamel to create a fanciful design. For example, the first coat is ordinarily a solid background of a first color, while the second coating, after the first is dried, is applied only to the tip of the nail, in a second color, or a set of diagonal stripes, across the dried first layer of nail polish is provided. The present invention relates to providing, in a simple and efficient, relatively inexpensively, manner, a product which allows fingernails to be quickly coated with a high-gloss, enamel-look. The product can be of a single color for ordinary looking fingernail polishing or, preferably, a fanciful design superimposed on a solid color background of nail polish enamel can be provided for a French manicure look. The manicure or freshly polished look, provided by the present invention, is accomplished by directly adhering, by self-adhesive means, a fingernail coating to the nails, consisting of semi-solid nail enamel. This, then, eliminates application of liquid enamel to the fingernails by manually brushing. Also, the prior art method of applying a coat of liquid nail polish to the fingernails suffers from the disadvantage that uniformity of thickness of application is extremely difficult, often resulting in a portion or all of one nail being coated with more nail polish than another portion or all of another nail. This lack of uniformity often caused the wearer to remove the polish, after drying, and then reapply a new coat of liquid polish in an attempt to provide uniformity of nail polish application.
Another problem which the prior art application of liquid nail polish suffered from, was that the wearer's skin often negatively reacted to the accidental contact with the nail polish, which was quite often due to the manual brushing of the polish, in liquid form, onto the skin. The use of the same nail enamel, but, now, however, in a semi-solid form, eliminates the accidental contact between the liquid nail enamel and the user's skin and the negative reaction therebetween is eliminated.
The method of manufacturing the present invention contemplates pouring the liquid enamel into a mold. A backing sheet of adhesively-peelable paper is slowly drawn through a passage of the mold to thereby coat the paper with a uniform thickness of nail polish. After drying, semi-solid, enamel-looking fingernail coatings result. If desired, pad printing of fanciful designs can be done on top of the partially dried coatings. The fingernail coatings are sealed and packaged in an air tight envelope so that when it is desired to use the product, the package is opened and after application of the coatings to the nails, the coatings are finally volatilized, i.e., "cured". The fingernail coatings are manufactured in groups of five nails to a strip and the user merely cuts the individual fingernail segments from the strip to facilitate coating each of the fingernails of a hand. A peel strip is also provided to facilitate the removal of the coatings from the adhesive backed paper.
The prior art, with respect to the product disclosed herein, is, of course, liquid finger nail enamel which comes in bottled form and is applied by either a manicurist or the individual, herself, by brushing onto the fingernails and then drying. As previously mentioned, fingernails, after being brushed with the liquid enamel, must dry, without touching anything else, for a few minutes. During this time, however, the just-coated fingernails emit, by virtue of the fragrance of the curing enamel, a pleasant but, often, too overpowering aroma. The French manicure or polishing of women's nails, recently quite popular, requires a second, partial, coating of the completely dried fingernails. This, of course, is time consuming and, in addition, requires the applier, whether manicurist or the individual, herself, to be quite adept at brushing only a portion of each nail with a design of a second color of enamel. Clearly, this is quite difficult, labor intensive, frequently unsuccessful, due to smearing, hand moving, shaking, etc. and rather expensive.
The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing finger nail coatings in a semi-solid state. A set of fingernail coatings are provided for simple and inexpensive application to the nails which will not smudge or smear, need minimal time to dry and, wet, can be preprinted with a design to look like the "perfect" manicure and French manicure. In addition, the curing of the semi-solid fingernail coatings emits an aroma almost identical in smell, but on a reduced level (due to reduced volatility of the semi-solid nail enamel of the coatings) to that of the drying of ordnary liquid enamel and that, too, enhances the desireability, while retaining authenticity, of the semi-solid fingernail coating application process.